Products such as molded plastic cups are often produced in large color batches; that is, it is standard practice to produce large quantities of such product in one color at a time. After a predetermined large number of articles have been produced, another large batch thereof in different colors is manufactured. For example, a large number of red drinking cups may be produced. Next, yellow cups may be manufactured in large quantities, and then green, and so on. This approach is much more efficient when mass producing such articles than attempting to mold or otherwise manufacture them in small color batches.
While economies and efficiencies in operation are obtainable when utilizing the large color batch approach, a problem in packaging of the products in shipping cartons presents itself. It is common practice to package plastic cups and the like immediately after production, the packaging operation including loading the cups or the like into shipping cartons or containers. In other words, the cartons will be filled with articles of a single color. Hundreds, if not thousands, of containers will be so filled in each batch process. Thus, the end result of such an approach is that the manufacturer has produced large quantities of shipping containers filled with articles such as cups of a uniform color.
Often, however, the customers buying such products wish to have a variety of colors in a single carton. In order to satisfy this desire, it has been standard practice to assemble together a number of cartons, each of which contains articles of a single color differing from the color of those in the other cartons. Employees then manually remove a predetermined number of the cups in any one carton and replace them with cups from one or more other cartons so that a desired color mix is obtained. This procedure is inefficient, time consuming and expensive. Furthermore, employees soon find a repetitive task of this nature to be boring, making an inherently inefficient operation even more so. The likelihood of mistakes being made also increases over time, which means that the color mix of the cartons or containers may not be that desired.
A search of the prior art located the following U.S. Pat. Nos.: 4,856,263, issued Aug. 15, 1989, 4,239,432, issued Dec. 16, 1980, 4,197,046, issued Apr. 8, 1980, 4,684,307, issued Aug. 4, 1987, 3,983,373, issued Sept. 28, 1976, 4,692,876, issued Sept. 8, 1987, 4,735,452, issued Apr. 5, 1988, 4,744,595, issued May 17, 1988, 4,976,584, issued Dec. 11, 1990, and 4,986,726, issued Jan. 22, 1991.
The above-identified patents disclose various article handling and/or packaging arrangements for a wide variety of products. None of the devices in this prior art, however, concern themselves with, or are appropriate for, the efficient automatic repackaging of articles in containers in order to modify the mix of articles therein so that an accumulation of articles having different predetermined characteristics is established in each container of a group thereof.